196 polar problems 



Dwellings and Household Utensils 



Dwellings show more diversity. In the polar zone there are 

 various types — the regular tent and the tent with a double chamber 

 (Chukchis and Koryaks), both covered with skins of reindeer or seal 

 or with birch bark; the hut of sticks and poles covered with branches 

 and bark; the dirt hut, half underground or entirely underground; 

 and huts made of turf, of poles, and of standing boards; and finally 

 a kind of timber cottage. 



The Chukchi-Koryak double tent with a special sleeping chamber 

 and the Eskimo dirt hut with an analogous chamber probably have 

 the same origin. They solve in the same way a difficult problem, how 

 to build a warm dwelling with no hearth, heated only by a lamp and 

 the warmth of the human body. They characterize the whole Ameri- 

 can part of the polar zone and also the adjoining part of eastern Asia. 



In the Eurasian half of the polar zone there appears in some places 

 a better type of dwelling, the timber cottage with a flat roof covered 

 with bark and leaves under a thick layer of dirt, with a fireplace of 

 a peculiar form made of rocks or clay or of thin poles smeared with 

 clay. We find this form of cottage and hearth among the Lapps 

 and Ostyaks, the Yakuts on the Lena (hearth only), and the northern 

 Russians beyond the Lena up to the Kolyma and Anadyr. 



Household furniture and utensils, tools, and the methods of various 

 industries offer the same general similarity in the whole polar zone. 

 In regard to these things there arise a series of questions which not 

 only have not been solved but have not been even raised : questions, 

 for example, about the earthenware which is found in excavations in 

 various places but whose manufacture has now almost entirely dis- 

 appeared ; about the implements of the Stone Age type in their inex- 

 haustible diversity — like the bow drill, the adze, the small curved 

 planing knife, the scraper for hides — which, although long out of 

 use in the materials of that period, are now reproduced in iron and 

 copper in exactly the same shape and for the same purposes. 



Weapons 



Everywhere, in Europe, Asia, and America, the so-called complex 

 bow is used, composed of two or more strips of wood of different 

 species glued together and covered with thin birch bark, often wound 

 around with cords and strips of reindeer sinew. The same sorts of 

 arrows are used everywhere — arrows with a blunt wooden tip for 

 small game, with a forked iron tip for larger prey. To protect the 

 hand from being hit when releasing the bowstring a bent piece of bone 

 is used; and as far as can be judged from pictures and museum collec- 

 tions it is of identical character, for instance, among the Ostyaks and 

 the Eskimos. The self-acting bow is everywhere set on game trails. 



